


equilibrium

by temporalDecay



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bull is worse, Dorian is a walking disaster, Feelings, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Rilienus is still an asshole jsyk, Rilienus joins the Inquisition with Dorian AU, all the feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 11:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10852827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: What if, inside the Redcliff Chantry, the Inquisitor had found not one, but two Tevinter mages killing demons and offering to help?Well, one Tevinter mage killing demons, and one blithely running commentary on his technique. But they're both willing to do what needs doing, to see Alexius' plans fail.





	equilibrium

**Author's Note:**

> ...well, you know, everybody who's got a Rilienus rolling around needs to write one of these. It's like a fandom rite of passage, amirite?

  


* * *

  


_equilibrium_

  


* * *

  


What if, inside the Redcliff Chantry, the Inquisitor had found not one, but two Tevinter mages killing demons and offering to help? 

Well, one Tevinter mage killing demons, and one blithely running commentary on his technique. But they're both willing to do what needs doing to see Alexius' plans fail. 

Dorian is sharp and mercurial and indomitable. Dorian makes sweeping gestures and travels through time; he offers protection before he's quite figured out what he's up against, and the Inquisitor decides she likes him, when he flirts with her in the same breath he comments on how good her casting technique is. 

Rilienus is rude and ruthless and loyal. In the time that wasn't, he's the first one to die, throwing himself at Alexius before the portal had finished up closing. The Iron Bull remembers that, in the dreary months that follow, the way Rilienus' eyes glowed with unspeakable spite, laughing as he died because he took half of Alexius' face with him. 

The Iron Bull is haunted, in the time that wasn't, by the certainty they wasted his sacrifice by failing to finish the job when they could. 

In the time that is, Bull sees Dorian fling himself at Rilienus' arms, clutching tight as he lets the Inquisitor deal with the Queen and the mages and all other insignificant details. Rilienus catches him watching, glare dark and threatening, but Bull thinks nothing more about it, than Vints being Vints. 

  


* * *

  


Dorian joins the Inquisition, swears his oath and kneels to the Inquisitor. Rilienus doesn't, but no one but the Iron Bull seems to notice, because Rilienus rides back to Haven with them and then bullies his way into the forge, to take over staff making for their newly acquired mages. 

The Iron Bull notices – the way Dorian leads and Rilienus' follows, the way Dorian smiles and Rilienus glowers, but most of all, the way that Rilienus notices him back, even though Dorian has eyes for the Inquisitor only – but he says nothing, and writes reports around it until he can say something of substance about it. 

And so it goes, Dorian inching his way into the Inquisitor's confidence, the Iron Bull watching him do it, and Rilienus watching them both. The Iron Bull flirts with Dorian, during long, tedious walks across the Hinterlands. Dorian flusters and snarls, the Iron Bull laughs from his belly at every turn. 

But he flirts with Rilienus, too, leaning on a fence and waiting for Harritt to finish fixing his ax. Rilienus doesn't fluster, doesn't snarl. Rilienus sneers and tosses his head, black hair swishing behind him and dares him to do better. 

The Iron Bull watches, thinks, considers, but does nothing with it, just yet. 

  


* * *

  


“If you offer,” Rilienus tells him, on the eve of their attempt to seal the Breach, “he will have you.” He smiles in the light of the fire outside Bull's tent, long hair framing his face in shadows that make the Iron Bull think of the sneers of Tevinter mages setting Seheron aflame. “He likes you.” 

The Iron Bull knows where Rilienus sleeps. He knows because he watches and keeps tabs on things, and he knows because it's the same bedroll that Dorian slumps into, when he comes back for another thrilling adventure in the Ferelden wilderness. 

The Iron Bull drinks his mead and tries, for the umpteenth time to really see Rilienus, but all he glimpses is more of what he already knows and ignores, because above all else, he's realized, Rilienus _lies_. 

“And you?” He asks instead, cautious. 

“You don't want me,” Rilienus replies, tone frank enough to give him pause. “You might think you do, but you don't. I'll peel the skin off your bones. I'll break everything of you that can be broken, even that you didn't even know about. Above all, you don't want to stay and I'd kill you rather than let you leave.” He smiles, twisted and jaded and magnanimous, all at once. “You can't have Dorian, either, not without staying, but you can let him have you, if that'll make the itch go away.” 

The Iron Bull sleeps alone that night, and every night all the way until they reach Skyhold. He knows Rilienus and Dorian do not, but he tells himself it doesn't matter, in the long run. 

It matters. It tickles his brain, this notion of having and wanting and taking, but it's still not something to put down in paper and send back to be sneered at in Par Vollen. He doesn't think too hard about why that is, either, but only because Haven is a barren wasteland beneath the snow, and he's got other things to think about. 

  


* * *

  


It's Dorian who flirts with him, now. Sort of. He baits and snarks, during long walks under the shadow of ancient trees in the Emerald Graves. He sneers and quips, as they ride along the rocky shore of the Storm Coast. He hisses and spits, as they wade their way through the Fallow Mire. And he taunts and smirks, as they drink in the Herald's Rest. The Iron Bull flirts back, with leers and innuendo and cackling laughs that make Dorian flush and stutter and glare. 

He knows he won't stay, when he falls in bed with him at long last. And he knows Dorian knows, in the way his eyes dance and his mouth quirks and the way he takes like a man hoarding for the coming winter. 

He buys Rilienus a drink, afterwards, and Rilienus surprises him by accepting. 

“Now stay away,” Rilienus says, but kind rather than rude, and the Iron Bull stares at his mug and wonders if he's had enough to drink already to start seeing things. “Stay away and let him fester on it until he's done with it. You don't want to stay, it'll be easier that way.” He smirks. “It needs not be forever, either. He'll get over it and it'll all be the same soon enough. He'll even have you again, by then, and it'll be just in good fun.” 

“You do this for every guy who wants some fun with him?” The Iron Bull asks, not taunting but wry. 

“I do it for every man he wishes would stay, but won't,” Rilienus replies, shrugging. “It's harder on him, and me, and them, when they say they will but don't. It's hard,” he adds, dark eyes thoughtful, “to stay. It's vicious and bloody and terrible, and I am so very sick of cleaning up after broken promises. So I do this and he pretends he doesn't know, and when the whim's over for all parties, there's more than just pieces left, from everyone involved.” 

“Whim,” the Iron Bull says, and doesn't mean it to come out so bitter, but it does and Rilienus laughs, that dark, mocking laugh that echoes with the same notes of the laughter in Seheron trenches. 

“Don't pretend to be offended, he's as much a curiosity to you, as you are to him. That's all it needs to be.” 

“Cause you don't like sharing, yeah?” The Iron Bull snaps, and he knows it's mean-spirited but doesn't bite down the words. 

“I'm very good at sharing,” Rilienus replies, the corner of his lip twitching up into a smirk. “I've just never found anyone worth sharing with.” 

  


* * *

  


The flirting doesn't stop, and neither does the sex. Not even when Dorian's barbs start to sting a bit more, when he pushes more than pull. Not even when his smiles are sharp like the edge of the Iron Bull's ax, digging at him for promises he's never made. 

Rilienus drinks with the Iron Bull, afterward, but he never says a thing. 

His eyes say enough, as it is. 

“You like Rilienus,” Dorian tells him, apropos of nothing, one day. 

The Iron Bull chokes on his drink and heaves over the table. 

“What.” 

Dorian is looking at him with shrewd, narrowed eyes. 

“You _like_ Rilienus,” he accuses, ignoring Bull's stare. “You like me, of course, because why wouldn't you, I'm eminently likable and _everyone_ always likes me,” he squints, “but you _like_ Rilienus.” 

“He's not...” he begins, fishing for a suitable descriptor and coming up empty handed as far as positive ones go, “...not so bad?” 

“He's a lying, vicious, murderous ghoul,” Dorian retorts dryly. “It's perfectly alright to admit it.” 

The Iron Bull feels flustered and is irritated by the realization he's not entirely sure why. 

“I mean, not always,” he says, weakly, and shrugs when Dorian keeps on staring. “Not when he's... you know, _caring_ about you.” 

Dorian stares. 

“Oh,” he says, more surprised than taunting, “ _Rilienus_ likes you.” The Iron Bull splutters somewhat. “And you like _him_.” 

“The hair is pretty,” the Iron Bull says after a moment, opting for the least... least meaningful thing he could think of. 

Dorian laughs. 

“Oh, this is _rich_.” 

  


* * *

  


Dorian tells Bull about the first time he and Rilienus met, in their youth. His voice is bright and his eyes are dancing. 

“Oh god, stop,” Bull cries, burying his face into Dorian’s thigh as he gasps for air. “I can’t-” 

“Well, what would you have me do?” Dorian replies, sounding vaguely offended. “I couldn’t very well leave it like that.” 

“You could have,” Rilienus mutters viciously, sitting on the floor by the foot of the bed, the crown of his head barely visible over the edge of the mattress. “You didn’t, there’s a difference.” 

“Shut up, Rilienus,” Dorian snorts, running a hand absently over Bull’s head and shifting slightly so he’s in less danger of getting skewered by a horn. “My honor was impugned. I had to retaliate.” 

“You threw a dog carcass at them,” Bull howls, his entire frame shaking with mirth. “Over the wall.” 

“A _reanimated_ dog carcass,” Rilienus points out, tone exasperatedly fond. 

Bull doesn't have to see his face to know he's smiling, despite his words. Dorian huffs. 

“I'm a necromancer,” he points out, “it seemed appropriate.” 

“He didn't even tell me he was going to do that,” Rilienus adds sullenly, shifting in his seat. “Gave me the reins and just told me to be ready to bolt.” 

He could very well come lie on the bed with them, but he won't. Bull knows damn well it's a sturdy bed: it can handle his and Dorian's misadventures, so it can sure as hell handle their combined weight. But there's something cautious about Rilienus, something that needs time to convince him that what he's doing won't blow up in his face. Bull hasn't touched him, hasn't offered even, but he hasn't been rejected either. 

“If I told you I was going to do that,” Dorian snorts, “you wouldn't have let me do it.” 

“Obviously,” Rilienus retorts, eye-roll quite clear in his tone. “Someone had to be the sensible one, between you and me.” 

“...we're doomed,” Dorian deadpans, even as Rilienus raises a hand in a crude gesture. He looks at Bull with a resigned expression on his face. “I guess you're going to have to save us and be the sensible one now.” 

Bull grins, staunchly ignoring the pulse in his gut or the fact Rilienus' eyes are peering at him grudgingly over the edge of the bed. 

“I pick fights with dragons for fun, Dorian,” he says, wry and terrified, “not exactly the best credentials for the job.” 

Dorian smiles at him and slumps dramatically onto his chest. 

“Absolutely _doomed_.” 

  


* * *

  


The Iron Bull thinks of Dorian's smiles and Rilienus' eyes, when he kills Hissrad with the sound of a retreat horn. 

  


* * *

  


Dorian stares when Bull walks into their room. He stares more when Rilienus rises from the bed, hair trailing like a whisper after him, and reaches with his hands to pull his head down so he can kiss him. It's gentle and kind, like Rilienus certainly isn't, and it makes the screaming in his gut bubble harder with each breath. 

“Oh, you foolish, stupid man,” Rilienus says against his lips, and reels him into the warmth of Dorian's arms. 

The Iron Bull cries and doesn't promise to stay; that's how they know he means it, before he even tells them what he's done. 

  


* * *

  


“What you did was brave,” Dorian tells him, long after Rilienus has dressed and left for the day, cradling his head in his lap and fingering his face with something almost like awe. “So very brave, Bull. I am sorry you had to make that choice.” 

“I'm not,” he replies, and realizes it's the truth. “I know who I am now, really know, without a doubt.” 

Dorian kisses him, sweetly, lovingly, and Bull thinks this too is worthwhile, just like the Chargers are worthwhile. The Qun dictates he's soulless, now, that nothing but madness and death are left for him. But if Dorian's mouth is madness, if Rilienus' eyes are to be the death of him, he thinks he might have gotten the better end of the bargain there. 

  


* * *

  


Bull drinks the antidote, and prepares his declaration for the Inquisitor. He never gets to give it, not like he intended, poignant and unarguable. 

“I thought you didn't fight,” he says, staring at the blood dripping down Rilienus' hands as he throws the heads over the battlements, swiftly followed by the remaining limbs that managed to survive the assault. 

Rilienus looks at him like a viper coiling back to strike, feral and dangerous, and it takes Bull a moment to realize the sentiment is on his behalf. 

“I don't,” he says, voice soft, and lets Bull raise his head so he can be kissed. “But I am so very good at killing.” 

Bull tries to laugh, it dies somewhere in his throat. 

“Maybe we should bring you along into the field,” he says, because he's committed to idiocy, but he can't quite joke about it, when he knows first hand the sort of kindness Rilienus hides behind his implacable glares. He thinks Rilienus knows he doesn't mean it, because he smirks when Bull adds: “There's dragons, out there.” 

“You don't want me to learn to kill for sport,” he says, patting Bull's chest dismissively but not callously. 

“No,” Bull replies, because it's the truth, “I don't.” 

  


* * *

  


Bull learns to see shades of grey in them: Dorian is not solid white, pure ideals and a gentle heart, and Rilienus is not even black, bottomless spite and uncompromising ruthlessness. Dorian's wit hides his heart – which is gentle, true – but it also hides the ugly pits of his anger, and there's nothing sweet or tender about his rage. Rilienus is vicious and proud of it, but beneath it there's a curl of something kind, something too soft to survive on its own, unchanged. Bull slides in between them, into the gaps they've left for him and he's scared to realize he fits entirely too well there. He sits there, in the middle, true to his nature – Tal-Vashoth, True Grey – and Krem cracks Tevinter jokes entirely too often for his tastes. 

“We should have brought Rilienus along,” Dorian sighs, shoulders slumping as Cassandra and the Inquisitor move around the corpses, inspecting them. 

Bull takes a good look at the vast emptiness of the desert all around them and gives Dorian a squinty look for his trouble. 

Dorian snorts. 

“He's efficient when he's cranky,” Dorian says helpfully, lips twitching in amusement, “and I swear to the Maker nothing would make him crankier than _this_.” He sighs dramatically. “We could be home already, by now.” 

Bull startles, twice. Once, because he thinks of Rilienus, blood crusting under his fingernails even as he melted into Bull's hands. Twice, because home is a strange, fragmented concept that doesn't translate well into Qunlat. He looks at Dorian's face, notices the tiny little details where he's pulled himself together to keep going, and snorts instead saying of something far more terrifying. 

“You say that like he wouldn't murder us all for bringing him here,” Bull teases, testing, it's not his game – that game of insults and jeering and poking at wounds so they won't scab over, ever – but he wants it, as much as he wants Dorian's mouth and Rilienus' eyes and everything else in between. 

Dorian studies him carefully, head tilted and lips pursed. And then he smiles, raising a hand to Bull's face. 

“You're really intent on staying, aren't you?” 

Bull wants desperately for something flippant and taunting, like, I've got nowhere else to go, do I? But that's mean and spiteful, and he hasn't got Rilienus' talent to spin barbs into silk, with his tone alone. So he smiles instead, and shrugs. 

“I'm trying to.” 

  


* * *

  


Dorian goes to Halamshiral. 

Rilienus and Bull do not. 

Rilienus is not heir to an ancient Tevinter dynasty, and Bull is not fond of the kind of killing that will need to be done, there. 

“He'll be fine,” Rilienus says, sitting next to Skinner, rather than Bull. “He likes politics a lot more than he'd care to admit.” 

Bull is still not entirely sure how the hell Rilienus has managed not to get shiv'd by Skinner, but he's not going to question it. Not out loud, anyway. Not anywhere either of them could hear. 

“Guess that means _we'll_ just have to have some fun on our own, huh?” Bull replies, grin widening when Krem starts leering at the same time Dalish starts giggling. 

Rilienus gives him a dubious look over the rim of his own mug. 

“...this is going to involve _dragons_ , isn't it.” 

It does. 

Rilienus has never seen a dragon before in his life. He's not quite sure he wants a repeat performance, after all is said and done. Bull does, and says so, and then kisses him right there in the middle of the scorched battlefield, amidst jeering from his men. Rilienus snarls on reflex, but he notices the subtlety to the taunting, the familiarity of it. 

“You really are a particularly stupid idiot,” he says, in lieu of something kinder, something softer, because Bull knows Rilienus saves all of that for Dorian. 

“You like it,” Bull taunts, because all of Rilienus' wit is his for the taking, instead, and he's learned to read affection it it, behind the supposed scorn. “You liked the dragon, too,” he adds, smug, watching Rilienus' face burn. 

“I absolutely did not,” Rilienus lies, easily, convincingly, but he's given Bull the cipher to decode it, and he knows it. 

  


* * *

  


Bull follows Dorian through the fog, ax at the ready as they try their best to avoid splashing into the dark water and waking up another small cluster of undead. 

“When you said, let's get Rilienus a birthday present,” Bull says, expression wry, “I was expecting a trip to Val Royeaux.” 

Dorian smirks at him over his shoulder, and the pale green light makes his expression not quite macabre. 

“If a suitable gift for Rilienus could be found in Val Royeaux, we would be in Val Royeaux,” he says, shrugging slightly before walking resolutely up the rickety walkway up to the beacon. “Alas, Rilienus is far too recalcitrant to enjoy something... well, enjoyable.” 

“He enjoys _me_ well enough,” Bull teases, because it makes Dorian miss a step and that gives Bull an excuse to wrap an arm around his waist and help him up. “And I'm very enjoyable.” 

Dorian makes that same breathy, disconcerted giggle of his, whenever Bull reminds him exactly how enjoyable he happens to be, and then shakes his head, trying to focus. 

“Yes, well,” he says, back on his feet and resuming his brisk steps, “he enjoys me quite a lot, too, and I happen to be the most enjoyable of all, but that does not negate the fact he is an irritating shithead who needs to make everything difficult, just because.” 

“So what are we looking for?” Bull asks, before Dorian can get truly worked up about it. 

“Something suitably venomous and nasty,” the mage replies, peering at the back of the beacon and watching in satisfaction as the veilfire reveals a bright green rune inscribed in it. “My research shows there should be a recipe hidden somewhere here.” 

“A recipe for what?” Bull watches warily as Dorian turns to face the next beacon with a determined look in his eye. 

“A poison so powerful it was purposefully lost,” Dorian replies, a hint of excitement in his voice, because deep down he loves discovering bits and pieces of the past. “Solas helped me pinpoint the last known location of the recipe here.” 

“And we're giving that,” Bull says a little dubiously, “to _Rilienus_.” 

“It's the best gift we could give him,” Dorian points out, with self-assurance that Bull wishes he had on the matter, “a weapon he will never use.” He stops by the next beacon and gives Bull a measuring look, before his expression softens and hardens in contradictory ways. It makes Bull want to kiss him. “He's not me, Bull. His reaction to temptation is not to senselessly give in to it. He's not you, either, he's not one to relish in his power. Rilienus enjoys being given choices that are no choice at all. It's not the poison, we'll be giving him. It's the satisfaction of knowing he could use it, and the certainty he won't.” 

Bull snorts. 

“My idea for a gift was some really nice rope-work and locking ourselves up in that room for a week.” He makes sure Dorian is watching when he pouts. “I feel inadequate now.” 

“Braid his hair into the rope, and you'll be fine.” 

  


* * *

  


Rilienus likes his gift. Gifts. 

Later, much later, as they lie in bed – they need a bigger bed, but somehow the thought never takes enough form to become action – sated and content and _fine_ , the subject of birthdays come up. Rilienus and Dorian's are four months apart, but Bull admits he's not... sure about his own. Hissrad grew up with the Qun, where that kind of sentimentality was not allowed, and Bull feels something twisting in his gut at the thought of that day – fire and gaatlok smoke, blood on the stones and the salt of the breeze burning his lungs – as a day worth celebrating. 

He doesn't mean to say as much as he ends up doing, words pouring out like rain, and a bit of him, that last ghost of Hissrad that still clings to his bones is horrified about it. He's done this so many times, got someone in bed and spun out their souls into damning threads, that he should know better. Dorian lies on his side, head resting on his chest, listening to his voice and the echo of his heartbeat, as Bull puts Seheron and the Qun and Hissrad into words. Rilienus sits up against the headboard, bruises fading slowly as he holds Bull's hand and runs his fingers across his palm. 

“Pick a day,” Dorian tells him, pressing his mouth against the center of his chest, “any day, and we'll celebrate like the world is ending.” 

“The world _is_ ending,” Rilienus says, thumbing the scars where Bull's fingers stop short, and offers a ghost of a smile. “But we're alive, and here, and that's worth celebrating.” He tilts his head til it's resting against a horn. “If nothing else, the gifts are nice.” 

  


* * *

  


“You're not going with him.” 

Bull looks up from the bag he's packing to find Rilienus leaning against the door of his room. Bull is not Ben-Hassrath anymore, and most of the time it doesn't hurt to admit it, but the training is not something he can wash away. Rilienus' ability to glide about like an angry ghost never fails to make him feel like he's going soft. 

“What?” Bull asks, and there's something about the twitch to Rilienus' mouth that makes him nervous. 

“You're not going to Redcliff with Dorian,” Rilienus says, hands clenching and unclenching. “You're staying here, with me.” 

“He's upset-” Bull begins, scowling, and then frowns as Rilienus bares his teeth at him, invoking the comparison to vipers yet again. 

“He needs to face this, on his own,” Rilienus explains, but for once Bull can't pinpoint the lie, only that it exists, somewhere. “Adaar will look after him. She adores him, she won't let him be hurt, not permanently. And he needs to face his father, or he'll never stop running away from him.” 

“All well and good,” Bull points out, leaving the bag on the bed and walking over to tilt Rilienus' face up so he can study his eyes and try to unravel the web of lies at the heart, “but none of that explains why you wouldn't want me to be there. Or why you're not going with him.” 

“You don't know what he did to him,” Rilienus whispers, hand clutching Bull's in a vice. “You don't... you weren't _there_ , after it was done.” He's angry, Bull realizes. Actually angry, bone deep and burning in his lungs, not just the skin-deep mockery of it he uses sometimes to mask up his lies. “If I go with Dorian, I will kill his father the moment I lay eyes on him. If you go with him, you'll learn what he did to him, and then you'll kill him with your bare hands. We can't do that to him. It's not... Halward Pavus is a fucking asshole and I hope he dies miserable and alone, like he deserves, but he's his father and Dorian loves him for all he fucking snarls about it.” His fingers clutch Bull's own hard enough to bruise. “ _We_ can't do that to him.” 

  


* * *

  


Dorian is haunted, when he comes back from Redcliff. Rilienus is still stewing, furious in that wordless, feral way of his that echoes the profound displeasure nesting deep inside Bull. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Bull asks Dorian, sitting in his lap by the hearth in their room, naked save the blanket wrapped around Bull's shoulders. 

“No,” Dorian replies, burying himself in warmth and safety and swearing to himself to keep his eyes dry. “Not particularly.” 

He tells him, anyway. Every tiny, excruciating detail that twists in Bull's gut like a knife. The abduction from a friend's home – his bed – and the long months waiting for something to change, something to give. Dorian talks about his home in Qarinus slowly and inexorably transforming into a prison, about his mother's coldness and his father's disdain. He talks about the blood splattering on the pristine marble floors and the crazed look in his father's eyes. He talks about finding Rilienus, at the end of that run, warm and soothing and vicious. 

“He said he did it for my own good,” Dorian whispers, heartbroken in every possible way. “He believes that, I think. Sincerely. He thinks there's nothing good to me being who I am, that I'm...” 

“He's wrong,” Bull hisses, curling closer around him, and concedes Rilienus had a point in keeping him away, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt to see Dorian hurt and know he wasn't there to help when it happened. 

“I know he is,” Dorian says, voice brittle and unconvinced even as he tries to smile for effect. “I know. I just...” 

“Can I help?” Bull asks, burying his face into Dorian's hair. “Can I do anything?” 

Dorian chuckles, infinitely sad and endlessly hopeful, at once. 

“You stayed,” he says, with an edge of wonder to his voice he so very rarely allows himself. 

“Yes,” Bull replies, rather than make any promises, because the first lesson he learned, about the ridiculous mess of raw feelings and acerbic wit he's become part of, is that promises are useless in the face of actions. “I did.” 

But that, he supposes, it's its own kind of promise in turn. 

  


* * *

  


When the Inquisition marches on the Adamant, Rilienus marches with it. 

But when Dorian and Bull fall into the Fade with the Inquisitor, he can only watch from a distance, screaming in outrage. 

  


* * *

  


Later, after the nightmare is defeated and the Inquisitor has made her choice about the fate of the Wardens, they finally get a moment alone. 

“I'm not talking to either of you,” Rilienus snaps, teeth bared and eyes manic. “You two can go fuck yourselves on each other, for all I care.” 

“It's okay,” Dorian says, even though his tone clarifies he doesn't really think so, long after Rilienus has stormed away. “He doesn't... he's not good with worry.” 

Bull thinks of Rilienus by the fire, prodding and offering and nudging him along. He thinks of the underhanded, ruthless, manipulative shit Rilienus has done, ever since he's met him. It clicks, somewhere, deep in the back of his head, and he would laugh, really, if it weren't all shit. 

“It's not the worry,” he says, resting a hand on Dorian's shoulder, heavy and comforting, judging by the way Dorian leans into it. “It's the fact he can't do nothing about it.” 

“Yes, well,” Dorian snorts, “that's life.” 

“Yeah,” Bull sighs, “but he needs to _do_ something about it.” He smirks when Dorian squints up at him. “You game to let him try?” 

“Clearly I haven't done enough stupid things today,” he sighs. “Sure, what do you want me to do?” 

Bull grins. 

“Obey.” 

  


* * *

  


It's awkward, sometimes. 

Bull watches Dorian and Rilienus mock duel for the benefit of the mages they're training, preparing for the final assault on Corypheus, and _thinks_. 

Of course it's awkward, how could it not be? There are no clear lines, no real power structure to the whole thing. If he were outside, looking in, he'd expect it all to end in flames. When he's feeling particularly morose, he does. But then Rilienus buys him a drink and needles him into an argument, and Dorian sits on his good knee and whispers terrible things in his ear until he's laughing with the weight of it. 

There's no word for it, not in Qunlat, not in Common, not in Tevene. 

The war is coming to a close, all their efforts crystallizing into one last battle, and the word after hangs terribly above his head. Dorian speaks more and more wistfully about Tevinter, and Rilienus hisses and spits about it, picking fights not quite as tender as the ones he does with Bull. They're figuring out where they'll go, once Corypheus dies, Bull knows, and envies them the fact they take for granted the fact that, wherever they end up going, they'll go _together_. 

He wants to know, if they think he'll go too. But then, they only have each other, and he's got the Chargers to look after. He's too Qunari still, despite it all, to shrug off his duty – a duty he chose, he forsook everything for – for the sake of what he wants. He wants words, symbols, boundaries. 

He wants _certainty_. 

He watches Dorian and Rilienus fight – with fists, words, magic, mouths, _souls_ – and he feels he should have that certainty already, that he's not tried hard enough just yet. 

The thoughts sit and twist inside his head, and the dread he feels about the final battle has nothing to do with Corypheus himself. 

  


* * *

  


Corypheus dies, as expected. 

...well, okay, the battlefield being literal floating rocks in the sky was not expected, but the end result was. 

They even survive it. 

Rilienus is pissed like a wet cat in a bag about the whole thing, but they've won and it's over, and Bull refuses to feel even slightly guilty when he picks them both up and they cling to his horns and laugh – Dorian laughs, Rilienus hisses and spits like a thing possessed, because he's Rilienus and he can't just let things happen – all the way back to their room. Their room. 

Their bed. 

Bull drowns in them, all of them, and refuses to think about what tomorrow might bring. 

  


* * *

  


“Ironically,” Dorian says, to fill in the silence as Bull stares at the pendant in his hand like it's a sacred relic, “killing the dragon was the easy part. It took Rilienus four teeth to get it right.” 

Rilienus leans against the door, eyes dark and sneer in place, and snorts acidly. 

“Fuck off, Dorian,” he says, “I'm used to working with metal, sometimes bone. Dragon teeth are just... irritating.” He pauses, then swallows hard and plunges in ahead, tone flippantly rude as usual. “No easy way to split the damn thing in three, either.” 

Dorian shakes his head and reaches a hand to grab Bull's wrist, eyes bright and teasing. 

“Well, go on, big oaf,” he says, “put it on, the suspense is killing me.” 

Bull does. It's surprisingly light around his neck, and yet also the heaviest thing he's ever worn. He looks down at the dawnstone framing the tooth and then notices that Dorian's is framed in silverite, while Rilienus' is onyx. But they're all three made from the same tooth, and they carry the same meaning, the same weight. 

“I'm staying,” Bull says, not a promise, not something that can be broken, just a statement of fact. 

If he had to give it a name, he'd call the warmth in his chest happiness. As it is, he thinks it might be love. 

  


* * *

  


What if, by the end of the war, Bull finds solace not in distance and promises and fleeting meetings, but the fact the Chargers' inner circle has grown by two? 

Dorian picks a fight with everything that Rilienus doesn't first, and Skinner and Dalish need to take turns sitting on them, to keep them from ruining negotiations. Krem could write books longer than Varric's, full of Vint jokes. Stitches argues viciously about the merits of traditional medicine versus Rilienus' magical healing, while Rocky fights to a similar standstill about his prototype gaatlok and Dorian's proficiency with fire. Grim rolls his eyes at them all and drinks his share while watching disaster from a safe distance. 

Bull sits in a tavern, nowhere in particular, fingering a pendant and basking in the sound of jeering and laughter, and thinks the word for this is _home_. 

  


* * *

  


**Author's Note:**

> ...I've got nothing. My original prompt was "The Bull trying to muffle his laughter on Dorian’s thigh" and somehow _this_ happened.
> 
> Whoops?


End file.
